Netflix CEO Applauds Hedge Fund Manager’s Call, Balls To Short Company, Would Still Appreciate If He’d Refrain From Doing So

Late last week, hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson sent out a detailed analysis of why his fund is short Netflix, which caught the eye of the company’s CEO, Reed Hastings. What’d Hastings think of the call? First off, he agrees you could make money shorting this thing.

“It is possible that one could make money shorting Netflix today,” CEO Reed Hastings, whose movie-rental company has moved to online delivery from DVDs, wrote in a posting on the Seeking Alpha website.

Having said that, and he doesn’t say this as the CEO of Netflix but as a friend and someone who loves kids, Reed would like to caution Tilson to back off before he or anyone else gets hurt.

“But shorting a market-leading firm as it is driving a huge new market is a very gutsy call,” Reed wrote…Hastings called Tilson “a great investor” and noted that they both provide financial support to the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a nationwide network of charter schools. “I am writing this open letter for him to try to get him to cover his short now,” the CEO wrote. “My desire is to increase his odds of making money next year so he can donate even more.”

Fact: In less than 2 months, Netflix will account for over 187% of all available Internet bandwidth. And that is without the addition of popular titles such as The Bounty Hunter and Clash of the Titans.

SAC

Mary Jo White was the top federal prosecutor in New York City during Bill Bratton’s first run as the Big Apple’s top cop, and she learned a few lessons from his “broken windows” theory: Clean a place up a little, and throw the fucking book at the street urchins who are messing things up with […]